Yahoo's promised summer upgrade to Yahoo Mail has already come to fruition. Members of Mail Plus now have a stupefying 2 gigabytes of storage now, and free mail users have 100 megabytes.

Of course, this comes on the heels of the 1 gigabyte of storage and bevy of improvements on webmail features introduced by Google's Gmail, which has essentially left its beta period. Tens of thousands of AdWords customers are now receiving invitations to sign up. That should increase the number of Gmail users to 100,000 in a matter of weeks.

Other improvements for Mail Plus users include the purging of all graphical ads. Andrew should be pleased by this one, having argued convincingly for years that it's ridiculous to force paying subscribers to view those annoying giant Flash ads. Well, problem solved, Andrew!

Yahoo also polished up a new interface for Yahoo Mail. But, it appears to mainly consist of slightly improved tweaks to the Yahoo Mail stylesheet, and a nicer color palette. The interface update is probably the most underwhelming aspect of these welcomed changes.

I think these changes are great, and I have no doubt they will make my e-mail experience more enjoyable. But, I don't think the 2 GB of storage will make that big of a difference to most Yahoo members who want to try Gmail. After all, Gmail's 1 GB of storage is free, compared to Yahoo's comparatively skimpy 100 MB.

Both Google and Yahoo are winners in this battle. But, as with most competition in business, it's the consumer who really wins, and that's good.